Excuse Me If I Don’t Buy This New Alliance Between Gun Nuts and the ACLU

esquire.com – You know what is just darling right now? The sudden turn of our conservative brethren towards constitutional fundamentalism regarding due process now that the debate over this country’s lunatic attraction to its firearms seems to be turning against the gun-fondling segment of their movement.

To be sure, there are serious due process issues regarding the use of a flawed no-fly list to restrict gun purchases, which is why the ACLU always has risen up and advised caution, and why people like Senator Cory Booker are moving heaven and earth to fashion a constitutionally viable safety valve for people who get erroneously chucked onto the no-fly list. Whether they actually can do that in a way that will satisfy what’s left of the Supreme Court is still an open question, but it is a little disconcerting to watch progressives jumping to some variation of the if-you-haven’t-got-something-to-hide argument. But that incongruity pales in comparison to the conservative movement’s recently acquired tendency to employ the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments in order to defend its absolutist view of the Second.